The sampling, or âcupping,â of coffee is an intricate process. Demonstrating it one recent morning, George Howell places a precisely measured layer of freshly ground beans on the bottom of a glass, then sniffs, shakes, and sniffs again. Boiling water is poured on the coffee, and Howell puts his nose up close and inhales deeply. Then, surgeon-like, he uses two spoons to remove any bean debris or foam thatâs floated to the surface of the glass. Next comes the stir: A spoon is rapidly submerged three times in the glass to allow the aromas to escape. Howell leans over, putting his face up against the edge of the glass as he stirs. As I attempt the maneuver alongside him, I wind up splashing coffee on my nose. Howell, laughing, tells me Iâve been baptized.

Thatâs not much of a stretch, actually. At various times, Howell has been called an âidol,â a âgod,â and the âhigh priestâ of the coffee bean. âGeorge has this almost mystical obsession with coffee flavor,â says Peter Giuliano of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. âItâs totally inspiring to coffee people. He has a transcendent passion about coffee, and a quasi-religious zeal.â

Itâs been nearly 20 years since Howell sold the Coffee Connection, yet he remains an influential figure in what has become a specialty-coffee movement in this country. In the late â90s, Howell was hired by the United Nations to improve the quality of Brazilian coffee beans, which inspired him to create Cup of Excellence, an international development program that helped set up the direct trade of beans from small coffee farmers to roasters. And just a few years after the noncompete agreement he signed with Starbucks expired in 2001, he opened a roastery in Acton called Terroir Coffee.

These days Howell is a fixture on the coffee-lecture circuit (yes, there is such a thing), and continues to be very much the coffee innovator. For example, he incubated the software program ExtractMoJo, which has become an industry standard by helping baristas pour coffee with the precision of a nuclear physicist. âHeâs this celebrity,â says Merry âCorkyâ White, a Boston University anthropology professor who is an expert on international coffee culture. âPeople all over the world know his name.â

So now, at age 68, George Howell is setting out to reconquer the coffee world. Heâs certain that heâs got the solution to the problem with the industry these daysâthat itâs been hijacked by latte elitists with no appreciation for the simple, pure, ânobleâ drink thatâs been the love of his life and the source of his fortune. These coffee snobs instead push fussy coffee-based beverages with complicated combinations of milk, sugar, and foam, Italian-sounding names, and high profit margins. With the Frappuccino, Howell may have set off the nationâs addiction to what are essentially coffee milkshakes, but heâs every bit the purist, disdainful of the espresso and âlatte artâ crazes, and convinced that boring old drip coffee is, as ever, the pinnacle of the form.

Howell looks a bit like the actor Chevy Chase. His sideburns are graying and his hair is thinning on top, and his teeth have a patina that comes from a lifetime of drinking coffee. On this September afternoon, as he prepares to conduct a cupping in the hip Brooklyn shop Marlow & Sons, heâs wearing a light khaki jacket and pants, with a button-down shirt the color of orange sherbet.

Howell, who looks to have about four decades on the rest of the room, begins the tasting with a slide show about the provenance of todayâs beans, which he sourced from several independent farms in Guatemala. Howell is big on slide shows, and his PowerPoints involve the sort of detail you find in an Al Gore presentation on the dangers of global warming. While he spends the next 45 minutes clicking through photos of volcanic cones, rows of coffee plants, and close-ups of âcherriesââthe cranberry-looking fruit from which the coffee bean is extractedâthe baristas remain silent. Howell at last clicks off the projector and walks to an orange table in the back of the room, where 40 glasses have been arranged for the cupping. The baristas, looking less than excited, join him, and Howell begins the tasting. For a few minutes, the only sounds are the clinking of spoons hitting glasses, a chorus of slurps, and subway trains rattling over the Williamsburg Bridge. The new rules of the coffee cupping, Howell explains later, dictate that people stay silent as they taste, in order to have a pure experience that doesnât influence anyone elseâs opinion. âI like a more informal approach,â he says.

Howell begins to prod the group, encouraging them to identify the flavors they detect in the coffees. âI donât care if you taste rubber tires,â he says. âI want to hear from you.â Finally, the baristas begin to engage. Someone named Dillon Edwards, who looks a bit like Van Gogh in a blue painterâs jacket and a straw hat, tells Howell that he has plans to operate a pop-up coffee shop in the barber shop up the street. Heâs been working with a gypsy roaster. Soon, everyone is discussing the subtle notes that reveal themselves in Howellâs coffees: currant, cashew, caramel, even hints of blueberry and strawberry. The baristas begin snapping Instagram photos of the table and uploading them to Twitter.

Raised in New Jersey, Howell moved with his family to Mexico City at age 13. In 1964 he landed at Yale, where he studied art history and modern French and Spanish literature, but soon found himself more taken with New York Cityâs jazz clubs. In 1967 he dropped out. That same year, he met his future wife, Laurie, and in 1968 the couple moved to Berkeley, California, where Howell, working as an art dealer, staged exhibitions of swirling, psychedelic Huichol Indian yarn paintings.

In 1974 Howell arrived in Boston and found himself in a coffee wasteland. The post-war convenience of instant brands like Maxwell House and Tasterâs Choice had dulled American taste buds, and coffee was considered nothing more than a cheap commodity (it remains the second-most-traded commodity on the planet, after petroleum). Dunkinâ Donuts was selling its own brew, of course, but most of its sales came from baked goods. No one was providing quality, freshly roasted coffee to the city of Boston.

Howellâs motivation for moving here was to get a foothold in the art world. And in his newly developed coffee passion, he saw an opportunity to do just that. âCreating the Coffee Connection in Harvard Square was a way of putting up an art gallery and doing the coffee simultaneously,â he recalls. âOnly we didnât know anything about coffee.â

In 1975 Howell opened the Coffee Connection in the Garage, sourcing his beans from Zabarâs in New York while waiting on the delivery of his own coffee roaster. The shop was an immediate success. âI did not drink much coffee prior to becoming almost infatuated with Coffee Connection,â says Gus Rancatore, who has owned Toscaniniâs ice cream in Cambridge for three decades. âI have immensely fond memories of that place. It was the best people-watching spot in the history of Cambridge. I think half of what I know is because of Georgeâa lot of what I tried to reproduce in retailing was because of that store.â

Photo courtesy of George Howell

In the next decade, the Coffee Connection opened locations in Faneuil Hall, Newton Centre, and Beacon Hill. Several more had opened by 1988, the year Howell flew to Seattle to scout out a coffee chain that had transfixed that city. The three owners of Starbucks had opened their first shop in Pike Place Market in 1971, sourcing their beans directly from Alfred Peet. Their devoted customer base eventually attracted the attention of Howard Schultz, a New Yorkâbased housewares executive whoâd noticed that the shop was selling an inordinate number of his drip coffeemakers. After trying Starbucks coffee for himself, Schultz realized heâd found a game-changer. He convinced the owners to hire him, and eventually became the companyâs chairman, president, and CEO.

âHoward Schultz was telling us he was going to take over the world,â Howell recalls. âHe said that right from the start. He had a national strategy, while we had regional ones.â So as Starbucks moved East, Howell prepared himself for the arrival of the âwave of darkness.â (Howell, legendary for his lightly roasted coffees, generally despises dark roasts, and has been known to refer to Schultzâs company as âCharbucks.â)

Howell began an aggressive expansion to fend off Starbucks. He brought on a board, raised venture capital, and doubled the number of Coffee Connection stores in one year. By the spring of 1994, the chain had 23 locations and was doing $16 million a year in sales. That same year, after opening more than a dozen Starbucks locations in Washington, DC, Schultz announced his intentions to break into the Boston market. At the time, Starbucks had almost 300 stores and annual sales of $164 million. Schultz twice offered to buy Howellâs stores, but was rejected each time. âHe thought they didnât make good coffee,â says Joe Caruso, a board member who advised Howell at the time. âI told him, âIt has nothing to do with the coffee, itâs real estate and capital and merchandise.â And he was really offended by that.â

Eventually, Schultz approached Howell with a third offer that was more than just a real estate deal. âHe got smart, and told George that he wanted the respect and the name and the quality,â says John Rapinchuk, who was a Coffee Connection board member and remains a close friend of Howellâs. Schultz paid $23 million, and promised to keep the Coffee Connection name on the bulk of the shops and bring Howell on as a coffee consultant. When Howell agreed in 1994, he and Schultz hosted a celebration at Faneuil Hall featuring a performance by Kenny G.

To many customers, though, the news was hardly worth celebrating. One disappointed coffee drinker told the Globe that the sale was âkind of like Kmart coming in.â Allison Arnett, the paperâs former food critic, says, âThose of us in the food business felt that it was too bad. It had been something unique.â

âThe sale was sad,â says Howellâs daughter Jennifer, one of his two children who are now working alongside him. âHe felt criticized, and the people who loved him most were being the meanest, like he was being a sellout.â Adding to the gloom, Schultz began to abandon Howellâs vision over time. He changed the recipe for the Frappuccino. The shops stopped carrying the lighter roasts that Howell was known for. Employees were given âshifting paradigmâ training to âacknowledge feelings…and talk about constructive ways to handle change in our lives.â And one day, staffers arrived to find that the Coffee Connection signage had been replaced with the green Starbucks logo.

In some ways, though, the sale was actually a relief for Howell. Focusing on Frappuccinos had distracted him from his true passion: finding the highest-quality beans on the planet. So he took advantage of his new freedom to travel and develop relationships with coffee farmers. And itâs those connections that heâs relying on to give him the edge this time around.

âTwenty years ago the differentiation between what we were doing in specialty coffee and what the [mainstream] brands were doing was tremendous,â says Ric Rhinehart, the executive director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. At that time, he says, commercial roasters were sourcing lower-quality beans in an effort to maintain a lower price. âWe were the antithesis. Quality was first, and price was second. Today, itâs harder to differentiate.â

To do so, Howell will have to compete against a new generation of roasters and retailers, commonly referred to as the âthird wave,â who fetishize coffee the way oenophiles do a grand cruâand whom Howell himself is largely responsible for inspiring. There was a time when coffee was simply coffee and no one really cared where it came from. This was the first wave, exemplified by Folgers and Maxwell House. Then came the second wave, the independent operators intent on sourcing their beans from specific countries and roasting them by themselves. Suddenly, chains like Peetâs, the Coffee Connection, and Starbucks were heralding the distinct flavor profiles of Kenyan, Ethiopian, and Costa Rican coffees. In the third wave, people like Howell began sourcing their beans not just from particular countries, but individual farms.

Many of todayâs largest third-wave coffee companiesâBlue Bottle in Oakland, Intelligentsia in Chicago, Stumptown in Oregon, and Counter Culture in North Carolina, to name a fewâsource from single estates. These outfits began by roasting and wholesaling beans in the late â90s, then progressed to operating retail stores as they expanded their national distribution. Along the way, theyâve raised tens of millions in venture capital. Even right here in Boston, Howell has tough third-wave competition, including the Arlington company Barismo, which bills itself as âa small-batch roaster focused on estate coffees and manual brewing methods,â and which now provides beans to many of Howellâs old accounts.

Howell finds himself âin the odd position of competing with people who followed his ideas,â says Toscaniniâs Rancatore, who sells a lot of quality coffee (Barismoâs, by the way, not Howellâs). âHeâs a gray eminence to a bunch of younger guys who are almost disrespectful.â

Trish Rothgeb, a roaster who is often credited with articulating the third-wave concept, agrees. âIn terms of third-wave kids out there, a lot of them arenât sure if theyâve heard his name,â Rothgeb says. âThey might write him off.â

Over at Barismo, Silas Moulton, the companyâs 25-year-old green-coffee buyer, says that âfrom a quality standpoint, George, more than any single person, has been the biggest advocate for really high-quality coffee.â In fact, Moulton says, Howell is Barismoâs biggest competition. Then again, he says, even Howellâs longtime fans seem to have lost track of him. âI think George had his moment. We get customers in here who say, âI used to go to this great place called the Coffee Connection.â Iâve told people that George has a roastery now. Heâs not as widely known as he once was.â

âWe opened our roastery four years ago because we didnât feel like there was a local roastery we could work with that actually was focused on baristas,â says van Schyndel, who in April opened his first retail location, Dwelltime, in Cambridge. âWeâre baristas. Heâs the green sourcer. He wants a perfect, pristine, repeatable product presented and he believes that he can take the barista out of the equation. And we really believe that the baristas are the salespeople. You really have to stick your neck out there if youâre doing wholesale to train your shops or to tell them how to serve better coffee.â

Simon Yu, whoâs operated Simonâs Coffee Shop in Porter Square for a decade and recently opened his second shop near Central Square, describes Howellâs relationship with baristas this way: âItâs as if youâre the student and itâs 9 p.m. on Friday and you want to learn, but your professor isnât available on the weekend.â Yu, who felt that Howell simply wasnât making the effort to connect with his baristas, no longer serves Howellâs coffees. âI feel bad that the quality he brings isnât delivered to his customers,â Yu says.

Howell, though, has been busy making a series of improvements to his eight-year-old roastery, and he insists that heâs ready, even eager, for a fight. The roastery posted a profit for the first time last year, which Howell says reflects his renewed focus. Heâs brought in a new COO, Rebecca Fitzgerald, who pushed him to design more modern-looking bags, change his companyâs name, and hire a barista to work as a trainer to his accounts, assuring that theyâll now get the service they need. And as his trip to Marlow & Sons shows, heâs been working to develop his own relationships with his clientsâ baristas. He says heâs poised for victory and that his competition knows it. âI think there are a lot of people afraid of Coffee Connection coming back,â he says.

Simon Yu is one of them. âFrom a business perspective, he has both the capital and the resources,â Yu says. âAnd thatâs what makes us scared.â

On a recent Friday afternoon, Howell and his wife, Laurie, are crammed into an SUV along with Fitzgerald, his COO, and his real estate agents, Adam and Jim Conviser. The agents are on their iPads, scouting locations for Howellâs new flagship. The vehicle weaves through Central Square, past the 1369 Coffee House, and makes its way into Kendall Square, where Voltage Coffee & Art is serving pour-over coffees and staging gallery exhibits. From there itâs across the river to Boston. As they approach the North End, the group begins discussing the Thinking Cup, which just opened a Hanover Street location, and at Government Center, Howell points out the steaming kettle that marks just one of several former Coffee Connection sites that are now Starbucks. They cross the bridge into Fort Point, where Barrington Coffee Roasting Company just opened its shop last winter, and head into Southie, which gets everyone talking about the biggest coffee news of the week: A Starbucks will soon open outside the Broadway T stop, just the latest display of the neighborhoodâs gentrification.

And that space will have to cater to that most coveted of coffee-shop demographics: the hipster. âWhat the hell is a hipster?â Howell asks. âI mean, other than tattoos?â Everyone starts offering up definitions. Hipsters are young creatives. Theyâre excited about hands-on, authentic experiences. Theyâre do-it-yourselfers who want to build their own fixed-gear bikes and talk to the people who butcher their cows and make their cheeseâthat is, if theyâre not aging their own GruyĂšre in their basements.

Howell rejects the critique. âDanâs always been on the periphery of it, never in the heart of it,â he says. âBut I have no trouble going into a scene and causing havoc. Thereâs always a new spin and always a way to do it better.â

For his part, Intelligentsiaâs Geoff Watts believes Howell has what it takes to succeed. âI think thereâs a huge audience waiting for him to make a splash,â Watts says. âThe industry knows heâs been doing quality work for years. But itâs important to have a face to your coffee company, and thatâs what your retail environment can do. You have to show off the product the way itâs intended.â

Howellâs coffee is being poured in some of the cityâs top restaurants, like LâEspalier, Troquet, and Bergamot. Thatâs just the start, he insists. The world of coffee is still so young, and thereâs still so much to learn. âI come back to that,â he says. âAnd I think thatâs why people come back to us.â